


Red phones and red lines

by BlueMoon0nTheRise



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Apologies, Declarations Of Love, Episode: s04e08 Plan París, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Negotiations, Old Friends, Phone Calls & Telephones, Reunions, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24361825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoon0nTheRise/pseuds/BlueMoon0nTheRise
Summary: After Plan Paris succeeds and Raquel is settled in the Bank of Spain, she decides to call Sergio. But of course, he's not alone, and a certain Inspector Sierra needs to be neutralized. A renuion fic of sorts, but only over the phone.
Relationships: Raquel Murillo/Alicia Sierra, Raquel Murillo/Professor | Sergio Marquina
Comments: 14
Kudos: 110





	Red phones and red lines

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first La Casa de Papel fic. Like it or not, it's not going to be the last, but whatever you think, comments are very very (very) much appreciated.

‘Raquel.’

His voice was low and hoarse and it broke on the second syllable of her name, but hearing it felt like coming home. The events of the last 24 hours bled out from her at the sound of it: the guns and the tunnels and the fucking _helicopter_ – and it was just them, just like sitting elbow to elbow in a tiny caravan or falling breathless into the sea.

‘ _Sergio_.’

Her face split into the world’s stupidest grin, and she clutched the phone to her face, relief manifested in breathless laughter and watery eyes.

‘God, Raquel, I’m so sorry.’

‘Sergio’, she croaked out, again, the tears threatening to spill over. ‘Fuck. I’m sorry too. We should have –’

‘Raquel’, he said again.

Through her delight she caught a dark edge to his voice that she hadn’t noticed before. It made her skin prickle. It made her wonder what he was apologising for, and her breathless relief caught in her chest.

‘Raquel, I’m not alone here.’

She inhaled sharply. Their victory suddenly seemed like a defeat after all. The receiver crackled.

‘God, listening to this conversation is the audio equivalent of watching paint dry. You’d think you two geniuses could think of something a _little_ spicier than just saying each other’s names.’

Raquel’s heart plummeted. The hope that Sergio’s voice had brought fluttered away completely, and dread resettled in her stomach.

‘Alicia’, she breathed.

‘Yes, it’s me’, Alicia said, her eye-roll audible in her tone. ‘I’ll make this quick –’

Raquel tuned out, Alicia’s quips fading to a dull chatter.

Plan Paris had been risky, but it wasn’t supposed to end like this. She wanted to rewind fifteen minutes - back to the euphoria of reuniting with the gang, back to a time when she assumed Sergio was minding his monitors quietly, waiting for Marseille to come back and watching her get acquainted with the bank. 

‘What do you want?’ she demanded, finding her decisiveness, and finding that aggression rose easily to the surface along with it.

‘Considering I’ve got the man you’d quite literally die for at gun point, you’d think you’d be a little more polite, wouldn’t you?’

‘That’s _exactly_ the reason I’m not going to be _fucking_ polite’, Raquel corrected her.

Her hands – shaking, she noticed – scanned the tabletop frantically for a pencil. There was nothing but a chewed biro, but she snatched it up anyway, and wound her hair into a bun as best she could.

‘It’s fine’, she heard Sergio murmur, barely audible.

She took a breath. There was a reason Alicia hadn’t been the first-choice negotiator on the first heist.

‘You’re obviously not interested in killing him’, Raquel observed. She tried to let her emotions cool, although her tone was still sharp, wounded as she was. ‘And given the stunt you pulled on him, why would I believe you if you said you did?’

She heard the other woman sigh dramatically.

‘Look, this is a courtesy call, really’, Alicia said, and Raquel thought she caught a hint of regret in her tone. ‘The only way I don’t go to jail is if I turn your little boyfriend in. Even then I still might.’

Raquel let the statement hang.

‘A courtesy call?’ she repeated eventually. ‘Really? Why would you bother? Isn’t he just another toxic relationship that will inevitably be meaningless?’

She thought she heard Sergio choke a little at that.

‘Fine’, Alicia said, her tone ice-cold. ‘If you don’t want to speak to him...’

‘I’m not speaking to him though, am I?’ Raquel countered. ‘I’m speaking to you. A woman who, unless I’ve seriously miscalculated - which I don’t think I have - will have by now taken the blame for her atrocities, if not for others' as well. Although the latter isn’t your style.’

‘So?’

‘So you’re going to jail whether or not you hand Sergio over. And you don’t give a _fuck_ about my relationship with him.’

Neither Alicia nor Sergio dared say a word.

Raquel cleared her throat, remembered to breathe, and continued.

‘So I’d say it’s in your interests not to piss me off.’

‘Darling, you’re in the Bank of Spain. And, as I mentioned, I’ve got lover-boy at gunpoint. I’ll give you this though: he’s much better looking in person.’

Raquel scoffed.

‘Just stop it, Alicia. Sergio and I are your only hope for freedom. For raising that baby somewhere other than a prison cell. I think that’s why you wanted to talk.’

She took another breath.

‘You can’t join us. I wish you could, but –’

‘I’m not the same person I was, I know. Neither are you, Raquel. Do you see yourself?’

The tears that had threatened earlier now spilled over without warning. Raquel wiped them away hurriedly.

‘I’m still on the right side, Alicia’, she breathed. ‘But what you did to Rio… I–’

‘Once upon a time you would have seen this heist as deplorable too. But it’s all about circumstance. And love.’

‘I’m not hurting anyone.’

‘Are you sure?’

Once upon a time Raquel Murillo would have felt faith in her own conviction, but all her red lines were blurred these days. The vocation she had dedicated her life to had betrayed her, and even right and wrong got jumbled up somewhere between Palawan and Italy; tainted by love and purpose and loyalty and revenge. The world was a mosaic of greys in a dark room and all she had was a tiny torch. 

She knew the pair of them could see the tears dripping down her face, but she didn’t even pause to brush them away. It didn’t matter. She didn’t come here to discuss morality with Rio’s torturer. Even if once upon a time she might have taken a bullet for both of the people in that hideout.

‘We can hide you’, she told her bluntly. ‘And money’s not an issue.’

Silence again, but this time Raquel knew that she had offered what Alicia needed. She just needed to accept.

‘There’ll be an arrest warrant out for me by now, you know.’

‘You can stay here then, for now’, Sergio said, sensing the finality of the deal and stepping in. ‘Is your car nearby?’

Raquel didn’t hear her response, but judging by Sergio’s the answer was _no_ , and she breathed a sigh of relief, wiping the tears from her face while they were distracted and taking down her hair with a still shaking hand.

She could hear Rio’s voice as he described his ordeal, breaking, _if I’d known where you were, I would have talked_ ; Sergio’s panic as he ran towards her and away from everything he’d ever believed in. And she saw herself and Alicia – young and ambitious, determined to catch the bad guys at any cost. And somehow, twenty years later, she’d been the one recruited to resolve a negotiation without violence, and Alicia had been recruited to torture a kid who’d got into something over his head. How easily their positions could have been reversed.

The discussions at Sergio’s end stopped, and the line was silent for a while. In the bank, Raquel leant her head against the cool wood of the table. In the hideout, Sergio watched her silently, his fingers aching to reach out and brush her hair from her face.

‘Are you there?’ Raquel asked eventually.

‘I’m here.’

They sat in silence a bit longer, Raquel appreciating hearing the sound of his breathing, even distorted by the phone.

‘I wish I could see you’, she said.

‘You might take that back if you could actually see me’, he said, and she laughed. ‘Personal hygiene hasn’t been top of my to do list.’

‘I can imagine. You should smell some of the guys at the bank.’

He laughed too, and it was such a relief.

‘When Marseille gets back, take a shower, ok?’ she said. ‘When I get out of here, I want to be able to touch you without a hazmat suit, got it?’

‘You’ve got yourself a deal, Inspector.’

They both grinned stupidly again, frustrated by the distance, but feeling infinitely better than they had in the last few moments in that ambulance.

‘Shall we go back to the beginning of that conversation?’ Raquel asked, sweeping her hair from her face. She felt oddly tender: the exhaustion and the adrenaline and the tears catching up with her. ‘I know you were acknowledging that you behaved like an arsehole, but I’m sorry too. If we’d planned out our negotiation strategy better… I was threatened, and I acted like a _fucking_ idiot. I should have trusted you.’

‘Two great negotiators won’t necessarily negotiate well together’, he agreed. ‘Particularly when one of them is struggling to reconcile his lifelong need for control with his need for – well, you.’

Raquel could feel his sheepish grin through the phone.

‘You memorised the whole plan in minute detail’, he said, more heatedly. ‘And I didn’t even think of _that_.’

‘We were short on time. Negotiation wasn’t something either of us needed to learn, after all.’

She heard him take a stuttering breath.

‘You beat me the first time though, Raquel’, he whispered. ‘And when I thought you were dead –’

‘Sergio…’

‘I would have done anything…’

‘I’m just glad you _couldn’t_.’

‘Raquel…’

‘I mean it’, she said. ‘You think I could live with you throwing away your life because I couldn’t climb a tree?’

‘No. No, Raquel. I would do anything, _anything_ , to make sure you stayed alive. Even if I never saw you again, it wouldn’t matter if I knew you were alive.’

‘Checkmate’, she replied, laughing through fresh tears.

‘I’d already betrayed the plan’, he said. ‘When I shouted at you. I was angry at myself because I knew you’d usurped it in my list of priorities and that was putting everything – including you – in danger.’

They both wiped their faces, sniffed and laughed.

‘You know it was Tokyo who figured out you were still alive?’ he said. ‘I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything.’

Raquel had never wanted to reach out and touch someone more.

‘And to think the police have you down as a psychopath.’

‘ _Really_?’

‘Psychopathic tendencies, according to Alicia.’

‘Why would they think that?’

Raquel laughed again, feeling a happy jolt as they fell back into their normal rhythm.

‘Hmm’, she said, drumming her fingers on the table in front of her, and grinning. ‘Generally, attempting to kill the mother of the woman you’re trying to seduce in order to learn the police’s strategy against your own robbery is considered a little cold.’

‘I have several objections.’

‘Mmm?’

‘Well, first, the police don’t know that I tried to kill Marivi, because _you_ didn’t know until you’d moved to the Philippines –’

‘You’re really not helping your case, Marquina.’

‘Second, I didn’t technically make the attempt, because I knocked the cup out of her hands…’

‘Tenuous.’

‘And I wasn’t trying to seduce you, I was falling rather helplessly in love with you.’

‘Hmm, I remember you mentioning that a few times.’

He let out a little burst of laughter

‘Do you have any other evidence, Inspector?’

Raquel grinned

‘I’m all out’, she admitted. ‘You win, psychopath.’

They laughed together, and when he spoke next, his voice cracked like before.

‘I love you so much Raquel.’

‘I love you too, Sergio. Now’, she said, smiling through tears. ‘Get us _both_ home alive, okay?’


End file.
